Despite a Hendrix, One Woodstock Fizzles

By SUZANNE DeCHILLO, Special to The New York Times

Published: August 20, 1989

BETHEL, N.Y., Aug. 19—
The sanctioned Woodstock commemorative concert, the one with the permits, the Port-o-Sans and the liability insurance, fizzled. But a spontaneous gathering at the hayfield that was the site of the Woodstock Arts and Music Fair 20 years ago here attracted thousands of people, who came with tepees, tents, blankets and sleeping bags.

Crowd estimates varied widely. The sheriff's office here in Sullivan County put the highest number at 25,000, for Friday night. By today, the number had dwindled to about 2,000. Promoters at the Remember Woodstock Concert, which was Thursday, Friday and today at the Imperial Resort Hotel, tried unsuccessfully to lure some of the music lovers who converged at the Bethel field. They offered free tickets to concerts featuring some of the folk and rock performers who played the original concert, like Johnny Winter, Leon Russell and John Sebastian. They offered free transportation to the hotel eight miles away in Swan Lake.

But not even Jimi Hendrix's father, Al, could tempt the crowd. The promoters had flown in Mr. Hendrix, 70 years old, and his wife, Gail Davis Hendrix, from Seattle. His son's rendition of the ''Star Spangled Banner,'' played at dawn on the last day of the festival in 1969, is solidly entrenched in Woodstock lore. The guitar player died in September 1970. 'This Is Sacred Ground'

Visiting the unsanctioned celebration on Friday, Mr. Hendrix urged the crowd to come toe the free concert, but most people stayed put, listening to music performed on a makeshift stage.

''This is sacred ground,'' explained Joseph Rogers, a Long Island man who was camped at the field all week. ''The performers aren't the best part here. The people are. We are the Woodstock spirit.''

''Twenty years later it's happening again,'' said Wayne Saward, a bridge welder from Orange County who has had an annual Woodstock reunion for friends at the Bethel farm with permission from the landowners since 1977. Mr. Saward also designed the concrete field monument that commemorates the 1969 concert.

''It's sad; the masses are at the site and the musicians are at the hotel,'' said Ms. Davis Hendrix.

Throughout the week, rumors spread quickly across the farm field that the original concert performers would return to the site. A reported sighting of the rock group The Grateful Dead proved false.

On Friday night, the folk singer Melanie, who performed at Woodstock 20 years ago, sang at the sanctioned concert to 100 people, many of them hotel employees. After the show, she returned to Bethel at 1:30 this morning.

''It's a pilgrimage for me,'' said the 42-year-old singer. ''Of course I came back.'' 'Part of Peter, Paul and Mary?'

Melanie opened her second concert with ''Beautiful People.'' The crowd roared approval. At last, one performer from the 1969 concert had returned.

''Melanie made the show,'' said Jennifer Gaurader, 18 years old, from Manchester, Conn. But she was not sure who Melanie was.

''She was part of Peter, Paul and Mary, right?''

By this morning, the medical tent, staffed by volunteers from the Bethel Ambulance Corps, was swamped with requests for aspirin. ''You could make a lot of money if you had the aspirin concession here; this is a beer-drinking crowd,'' said the captain of the ambulance corps, who identified himself only as ''Muskie.''

Bruce Taylor, a promoter of the ill-fated Remember Woodstock Concert, said: ''The concert belonged in Bethel at that farm, but because of the bureaucracy it didn't happen. Many government officials didn't see the big picture. If the city fathers at Mount Rushmore felt the same way some feel in Sullivan County, they would have chiseled Mount Rushmore to dust. Woodstock is a national monument.''